Media Alert: UW Bothell School of Business Dean's Distinguished Speaker - Digital Transformation of Health and Medicine: Opportunities and Challenges

WHAT:UW Bothell School of Business Dean’s Distinguished Speaker Ritu Agarwal, Ph.D.Topic: The Digital Transformation of Health and Medicine: Opportunities and Challenges
Professor Agarwal will discuss the difficulties associated with incorporating innovations into an established and entrenched system where the practice of medicine has a centuries old tradition.

WHO:
University of Washington Bothell School of Business Dean’s Distinguished Speaker Ritu Agarwal, Ph.D.

WHY:
According to Ritu Agarwal, Ph.D., the health of citizens is, arguably, a crucial concern for public policy in nations across the globe, and constitutes a significant proportion of government spending. In the United States, healthcare is the largest sector of the economy, accounting for more than one of every six dollars of spending in 2012. Yet, despite extraordinary expenditure, the US healthcare system suffers from significant deficiencies with respect to both healthcare quality and cost. Today, there is substantial optimism that the digital transformation of healthcare through broad and deep use of health information technology (HIT) across the healthcare ecosystem, in conjunction with other complementary changes, can address some of the systemic problems confronting healthcare. However, a number of significant obstacles need to be overcome before the transformation becomes a reality.

This talk will provide an overview of the challenges confronting the US healthcare system. Over the past five years Agarwal’s team has conducted multiple studies focused on various aspects of the digitization of healthcare. These include the adoption of electronic health records by hospitals, privacy concerns associated with electronic medical data, and the growing role of the Internet in healthcare choices and public health. Agarwal will summarize key findings from her ongoing and prior research, and conclude with a discussion of the opportunities that lie ahead.